Xeon D's

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Wiseguy2001

2[H]4U
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Nov 28, 2001
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I came across these by accident when reading a comparison with Xeon E3 v4 chips from Anandtach.

Xeon D-1540:
8x 2.0Ghz (16 with HT and 2.6Ghz speed boost).
12mb of cache.
Support for up to 128GB of ECC RAM (4 slots, 2 channels).
45watts!

They do look interesting, especially with 2x 10GBase-T ports on some boards. Thoughts?
 
It's the price that's kind of the killer on this one. Nearly $1000 a board is kinda ridiculous. Had they been around 6-700, I wouldn't have minded given the 10GbE and badass 8-core SoC and 128GB of RAM. 128GB of DDR4 is around 3k.
 
RAM is expensive, the boards are still super expensive, and the drivers are pretty flimsy still. give them a bit more to mature.
 
sachem87184 said:
Here's a link to a nice in-depth discussion about them. From what I remember the price vs. power savings didn't pan out.

Link: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/intel-xeon-d-1500-series-discussion.5036/
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Damn, that's a lot of chatter! The one thing I did think would be cool is putting one of these in a laptop, what would be one hell of a workstation laptop. I can see hosting companies loving these.

QHalo said:
It's the price that's kind of the killer on this one. Nearly $1000 a board is kinda ridiculous. Had they been around 6-700, I wouldn't have minded given the 10GbE and badass 8-core SoC and 128GB of RAM. 128GB of DDR4 is around 3k.
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It's nearest comparison is an E5-2630L v3 (minus 2 memory channels), so in that respect it isn't a bad deal. The D-1520 (with motherboard) should come in about half the price, it's also half the CPU.
 
SuperMicro's X10SDV-TLN4F has the D-1540 with 2x 10Gbase-T network ports (and 2 "normal" 1Gbe ports). The board is available qty 1 street price for about $880, which is a fairly good deal when compared to a comparable E5-2630Lv3 + MB + dual 10Gbase-T adapter (street prices new ~ $600 + $250 + $200).

Intel's not offering any bargains here (why should they, they have no real competition anymore :(), but the boards are fairly priced.
 
QHalo said:
It's the price that's kind of the killer on this one. Nearly $1000 a board is kinda ridiculous. Had they been around 6-700, I wouldn't have minded given the 10GbE and badass 8-core SoC and 128GB of RAM. 128GB of DDR4 is around 3k.
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32GB sticks of memory for this board are only ~$320 (link). So, really not out of line.

I just picked up this board and 64GB (32GBx2) of memory. I didn't get the 10GB ethernet version, which was nearly impossible to find due to popularity/scarcity, or both. I needed a setup with >32GB of memory, and to get a small form factor was also desirable.
 
I'm gonna get one when they release it with SFP+ ports. 10GBASE-T is just meh. Skylake, maybe?
 
raiderj said:
I just picked up this board and 64GB (32GBx2) of memory. I didn't get the 10GB ethernet version, which was nearly impossible to find due to popularity/scarcity, or both. I needed a setup with >32GB of memory, and to get a small form factor was also desirable.
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How does it cope with super-complex super-large spreadsheets?
 
Quartz-1 said:
How does it cope with super-complex super-large spreadsheets?
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At the moment I don't have anything installed on it.... so right it's handling as a great desk ornament :)

Going to put ESXi on it and see how it does with a bunch of VMs. Hopefully well?
 
How are you cooling it? I know it has a passive heatsink, but when it's designed to sit in a shroud behind a bank of 40mm 12k rpm fans, that isn't really passive.

I'm waiting until the end of the month to see how much Skylakes overclock. Seems hard to get non-ecc 16gb (let alone 32gb) Dimms, and I refuse to buy 8gb dimms in 2015.

Saying that, the amount I game these days. There's little point in building a gaming PC. One of these with a decent GPU (and not much else!), should handle anything in the next few years.
 
For now I have a 120mm fan on the side of my case that blows onto the heatsink. The fan sits a few inches above the heatsink, and currently I have the motherboard set to an "automatic" profile for cooling. That keeps the CPU just under 60 degrees. If I crank the fan speed to maximum, the temperature drops to just under 50 degrees. I also have two 120mm fans in the front of the case, but their not high RPM fans.

So, the CPU is warmer than I'd like, but I've had the system up for several days now and stability seems fine. I'd like to get an actual heatsink/fan assembly when one is available.
 
I have the non-10GB one as well, in a U-NAS NSC-800 case. Only running the 3 following VMs under ESXI 6, but it's working well. It's kinda overkill for what I need though. Plex transcoding is it's most common demanding task. Once in a while I'll play with building Android in Ubuntu.

VM1 = Synology DSM 5.1-5055 ● Plex PMS, Sonarr, Couchpotato, NZBget, Silicondust DVR, ect.
VM2 = Ubuntu 14.04.1
VM3 = Windows 8.1 WMC
 
Anyone else notice a couple new options were added to Supermicro's site:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon3000/#1667

What are you guys paying for these?
The 8 core 16 thread + dual 10GbE ~$900 - $1000 and the others aren't much cheaper.

I was hoping X10SDV-4C-TLN2F would be at least half the cost of it's big brother.
D1520 = $199 vs D1540 = $581

If I see that 3x cost difference reflected ...im in!!
 
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I was really into these when they were first announced, hopefully they mature well. I could definitely see one of these under my workbench for a NAS and VM environment.
 
Has anyone seen anywhere actually selling Xeon D boards? Availability seems poor. Searching turns up lots of articles and reviews but no sites actually selling these. Amazon US has a few at like $1k but I'm in the UK and not prepared to pay that much.
 
Concentric said:
Has anyone seen anywhere actually selling Xeon D boards? Availability seems poor. Searching turns up lots of articles and reviews but no sites actually selling these. Amazon US has a few at like $1k but I'm in the UK and not prepared to pay that much.
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You want to speak to Manvir Klair at Bios-IT:

Manvir Klair | Sales Executive | BIOS IT
T: +44 (0) 203 178 6469 | M: +44 (0) 7714 754 060 | [email protected]

He quoted me but we ended up looking elsewhere. Which ended up a bust so I may be going back to him.
 
Quartz-1 said:
You want to speak to Manvir Klair at Bios-IT:

Manvir Klair | Sales Executive | BIOS IT
T: +44 (0) 203 178 6469 | M: +44 (0) 7714 754 060 | [email protected]

He quoted me but we ended up looking elsewhere. Which ended up a bust so I may be going back to him.
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Thanks! But they look like a big outfit that would deal with business customers - is he going to be interested in me ordering just one board? :p
 
Concentric said:
Thanks! But they look like a big outfit that would deal with business customers - is he going to be interested in me ordering just one board? :p
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You'd be surprised. A sale is a sale. This isn't always the case, but I've had one off orders for home from large business only deals.
 
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